Day 19: cross winds… our new enemy

Hey hey it’s Julia! So we thought when we left the Rockies in the past that it would be smooth sailing through the plains. Well we were wrong. I have never experienced such intense winds before EVER. While we were having breakfast, my oatmeal literally blew away. 

Our day started out pretty great. We decided to make our own path today since we didn’t want to backtrack up the hill we went down yesterday to get to the Adventure Cycling path. We changed the route a few times as we found dirt roads….we are not testing Brian’s tires anymore than we have to. 

The first 20miles today… *chefs kiss* beautiful! We were cruising. There was a tail wind. We were jamming out to music on my speaker. We stopped and got glizzies (hot dogs) for lunch. Life was great. Then we turned south (literally and figuratively). 

We got hit with the worst cross winds, where we were struggling to bike straight. Thank god we were on a road with basically no cars because I spent a majority of the time getting blown into the middle of the road. I was thinking “This is it. This is when I am finally going to fall off my bike.” Luckily, that didn’t happen and I kept both tires firmly on the ground, though, Brian and Dustin were probably disappointed I didn’t join their fall squad. 

For the rest of the day, we were just fighting with the wind that made it feel like we were pedaling into a brick wall. Also, apparently the plains aren’t as flat as we thought because we came across a hill that forced us to walk up it. Sometimes that’s just the way it is. At least Dustin got to see a street with his name:

By the end of our 50mile ride, our morale was quite low after being beat up by the wind, so we did what any self respecting cyclists would do after a long hard day…. Go to the bar! Right next to our campsite is The Keg (supposedly a family restaurant…?) where we feasted on Coronas, Blue Moons, pizza, jalapeño poppers, and a blooming onion (that counts as a vegetable, right?)

Since we had the whole afternoon to ourselves we hung out in the park, played some cards, and hung out in the RV park’s laundry room to recharge all our stuff. We also got to chat with two college sophomores from Princeton and Boston College who are also cycling across the country! My parents actually ran into them back in Idaho at a restaurant, but now we finally got to meet them! We are all heading to Great Falls tomorrow, so we might ride together. Imma be honest, though, these guys seem wayyyyyy faster than us, so we shall see how that plays out. Oh to be young college students with much more energy. 

Alright well I am going to sign off with a picture of my tan lines. This is after 2.5 weeks….imagine what it’s gonna be after 8. Oof.